- Venue
- Leeds Metropolitan University
- Location
- Yorkshire
Unheimlich is usually translated as Uncanny. Freud wrote an essay on the subject during one of his rare forays into aesthetics. His basic thesis was that something that disturbs, or even horrifies us, is not the opposite of something safe and comfortable, rather a subset of it. In short shock and/or horror has no power over us unless we can see it as part of our life. Unheimlich can be more accurately translated as “unhomely”. The reason for using the German word for this five artist show – at Leeds Met Gallery curated in association with Matt Roberts Art – is to emphasize the relationship that the strange has with the normal, safe and homely.
Of the five artists the most approachable work seems to be that of Rachel Goodyear. Her small, exquisite, drawings with some splashes of colour seem to be awaiting a fairy tale as yet unwritten. Figures – naked, mostly – are at the mercy of some peculiar agency. They stand on their own hair or have a buttercup taped under their chin which reflects yellow to prove an affinity with butter. Forever. The pictures – nine in all – are arranged on a wall in such a way that hints at narratives, but allows the viewer to skip images that don’t fit. We seem to be drawn to look at a world that is isolated and yet parallel to our own. Not so approachable, after all.
Matt Lippiatt also uses a form of narrative to move us through his ideas. His two pieces – a noticeboard and a diving board – seem like cousins under the skin. They address the phenomena of missing people. On the noticeboard are dozens of handmade missing posters. All those pictured are handsome, buff, young men, stripped to the waist showing gym-scultped bodies. Surely these are the least likely to be abducted – strong and in the prime of life. The black diving board looms over the gallery and is a road to nowhere. At its foot is a pile of clothes – trainers, socks, jeans and boxers – probably left by one of the Adonis’s from the noticeboard. There’s nowhere to go from the top of the board and there’s no evidence of a jumper landing on the floor. We’re filling in a narrative that is sadly familiar but in this case populated by the wrong cast.
In the same space as Lippiatt’s work is a collection of noisy, jerking, machine-assisted mattresses. Pete Smith’s family group – ‘Lot’ – of four squalid upright mattress is probably the most outwardly disturbing of all the exhibits on display here. Vagina like orifices have been cut and hemmed in the bedding and machinery protrudes from three of the four mattresses. The piece is based on the Biblical story of Lot who, while drunk, slept with his daughters. Did I mention Freud had something to do with the idea behind the show? Two partial figures rock against the mattresses in a sexually exhausted but relentless way. It’s the bride and the bachelors came to life in a skip. It’s unpleasant and unending. Smith is the only artist with only one piece in the show. The other artists’ work benefits from the companionship of second pieces and it would have been good to see more of Smith’s work.
Aesthetically Steve Bishop’s two sculptures occupy a completely different realm from the the Pete Smith construction. Where ‘Lot’ is dirty, his two pieces are clean and smart. One – ‘Suspension of Disbelief ‘ – is a taxidermied fox supported by flourescent tubes. ‘Run through with flourescent tubes’ would be a closer description. The poor fox hangs in mid air, curled and dead, at climax of a series of events that make no sense. The second piece is a conflation of two fish tanks, one behind the other. The front one, half filled, has two small goldfish swimming in it. So far, so normal. The rear tank has a black and white screen butted right up to the front one and Charlie Parker silently blows. The goldfish now seem to swim the sinuous lines of Parker’s playing. These two pieces are more conventionally sculptural, to my eyes at least, and echo the Surrealist notion of the “beautiful chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella”. The Unheimlich-ness of these pieces appears to be bound up in the elegance and absurdity of the re-purposing of the objects.
Upstairs is the work by Clara Ursitti. A large projection is accompanied by a commentary. The images – sharks, coral, jellyfish amongst other, non-aquatic, things – flash up in rhythmic bursts while the soundtrack accompanies with a looping and patient narrative. After a while it becomes apparent that we are being hoaxed. The two elements – pictures and sound – are only related by virtue of being shown together. A forced marriage, if you like. As the reel progresses an absurdity creeps in, along with a feeling that life is a bit like this. Stuff gets wedged together and we have to deal with it. Ursitti’s second piece – Selection From The Dolphin Girl Porcelain Collection – is an impossibly beautiful wall piece. It’s a mirror, cut to resemble a wave, jutting shelf-like from the wall. On this ledge are small porcelain figures of a girl and a dolphin in various forms of congress. Some sexual, some not necessarily sexual. It’s based on a real story too elaborate to cover here, but the protagonists were marked for like (and I’m including the dolphin in that). The piece’s assured appearance draws us in, the figures repel and fascinate.
So it’s a varied show, which is no mean feat when only five artists are included. How Unheimlich are the works? Well, that depends on your own home and your sense of the unnerving. It’s good to see a show that addresses this subject head on and in such a measured and smart way. So much contemporary art would like to shock and only does so by shouting and swearing at its audience, rather than drawing that audience to itself before showing its hand. Seduction, it seems, is part of the process.
There's a short film on Youtube. Find it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjD5B564kXo
